I liked it, it wasn't groundbreaking but it was fun and sets the series up well. It's probably going to be getting compared to the films a lot which isn't really fair, but give it time and I'm fully confident we'll get typical Whedon character advancement as time goes on. You can already see several of his character templates. I'm glad they just come out and reference everything from Avengers straight up rather than the winking and nodding that was going on a bit in Iron man 3. I get why they did that in Iron Man, I just prefer it this way.

So putting some more perspective into it, I'll give you something other than "Ugh. That was poor."

I think the show has potential. The dialogue was at an almost terrible level and outside of the Asian woman I thought most of the actors were really rough. Even Coulson doesn't seem to mesh with the style and feel of the show. He just feels really out of place.

I did like the tie in to Iron Man 3 with the antagonist, though, and I can see it getting better as time goes on.

I wish they would have just gone out and made Gunn be Luke Cage. Seemed kind of like a "half-measure". When they teased the thing with Sky with him going public and stuff, thought for sure it was leading to Heroes for Hire and was like "Damn, they are really going all out with this thing EXCEPT for actually calling him Luke Cage"

It's definitely gonna get better once the characters become more fleshed out, we see some of their backstories and there's a longer story arc, but I'm already enjoying it immensely. Hope they continue to have the occasional cameo here and there. Guessing they'll bring someone in for the season finale, but hopefully for the odd episode throughout as well.

My one tiny gripe is that Coulson is a million times better as a comic relief character than as an authorititative figure.

What is the Rising Tide? What are their goals, what are their plans? These are questions that I've asked myself from day one. Are they trying to bring SHIELD out into the light? Pretty sure they are. Are they trying to expose to the people that there's a secret organization that basically runs the whole world? Pretty sure nobody really cares and if they did, they'd be glad someone's there to defend them from threats of that magnitude.